harmonicminer

This is a repost of something I put up a couple of years ago, with a new link to a supporting article in the UPDATE below.

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Having become recently weary with claims made by various folks about how Jesus would do this, or wouldn’t do that, or just the very silly WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) line that some people seem to think is the all-time discussion ender, I have a few to propose myself.

What baby would Jesus abort?
What mother would Jesus tell, “It’s your body and no one should tell you what to do”?
What person would Jesus rob to provide for someone else?
What child would Jesus fail to protect?
What person would Jesus make helpless by stealing her only weapon?
What person would Jesus send federal marshals to, in order to collect unpaid taxes to be used to support other people?
What school system would Jesus sue, for allowing prayer to Him?

Some will say these are unreasonable questions, and that others are just as fair. I’ve heard a few. Here goes:

What person would Jesus allow to starve? Answer: many hundreds of thousands during His lifetime and ministry, based on likely world population at the time and known economic conditions. “You will always have the poor with you.” It is simply impossible to make the case that Jesus’ life and death were mostly about “taking care of the poor” in an absolutist, goal oriented sense, where that goal is understood as transcending almost all others, because He did not Himself live that way, nor did he demand that others do so. He spoke against “injustice” in relation to the poor. You may argue about what that means, but only in the light of the fact that He did not Himself attempt, even with his human abilities, to spend every moment and every resource in taking care of the poor, let alone His divine power, which could have been used subtly in very many ways to essentially end poverty in Palestine… and elsewhere. We have no reason to think there were not still plenty of hungry people when he left one town for the next, and scripture gives us no reason to think otherwise.

What person would Jesus arm? Answer: Shepherds. “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” Who is responsible to protect sheep, and themselves, so they can protect the sheep? Who ARE the sheep? You decide.

What would Jesus drive? Answer: Whatever would get him where he needed to go, within reason. I don’t suppose he’d have driven a semi-truck. Maybe on food deliveries. Probably not.

Who would Jesus bomb? Answer: See above about arms and shepherds. Sometimes, life is hard. But Jesus would surely not have suggested that Britain allow itself to be bombed without self-defense, which, sadly, often means “bombing back.” Response question: Which British child would Jesus have selected to be killed because British forces didn’t return fire on German factories and infrastructure, even admitting the limited accuracy of then-current technology, and knowing innocents would be killed? Secondary question: Which Polish Jewish child would Jesus select to be gassed because the Allies were stupid in their prosecution of the war, starting with when Hitler occupied the Rhineland with military forces? It is safe to say that all of Europe could have done with better “shepherds” than Chamberlain and Daladier.

The point: very few slogans are up to the job of telling the truth. And particularly, I am very suspicious of slogans involving the name of our Lord.

UPDATE:  Tim Dalrymple has a lovely new post called Whom Would Jesus Indebt? at ReAL.

The previous post in this series is here.

A Telegraph editorial makes the case that the causes of Britain’s current unrest are very much related to the USA’s own problems, in that they spring from common roots, in A palpable change in the national mood

Murray predicted that this growing phenomenon would be concentrated in certain inner-city communities, creating a value structure largely divorced from mainstream society. Several consequences would follow: the children brought up in these circumstances would be poorly educated and lack the desire and wherewithal to work; and the communities themselves would be prey to high levels of crime.

What Murray foresaw has come about. Indeed, Britain did not change this week when the rioters took the streets to burn and plunder, it changed a long time ago. Despite the varied social backgrounds of many of those now before the courts, most of the youths who were at the heart of the appalling scenes of lawlessness will have come from the communities that Murray described. They are not the product of bankers’ rapacity or high-level political venality, although the moral context for bad behaviour is, as Peter Oborne observed in these pages yesterday, a matter for the wealthy and powerful to consider as well as the poor.

This crisis has been building for years. It is the result of a major cultural shift that took place in the 1960s and 1970s, and the long-term decline of the conservative values and institutions that had underpinned British society since the late 19th century. This process was marked by a collapse in the belief in marriage, a retreat of the police from the streets, a move away from tough penalties for property crime, the rise of moral relativism and rampant consumerism, the diminution of stigma as a restraint on bad behaviour and the entrenchment of welfare dependency. It was not about poverty, but a collapse in values. Today, the benefits system sustains the underclass and poor state schooling is unable to compensate for the harm caused by broken homes and absent fathers. Inadequate policing cannot suppress the symptoms of crime and disorder. These communities are trapped in a vicious circle, where violence, crime, intimidation and hopelessness are quotidian. It is a world from which most of us are insulated until it spills into the wider community, as it did so nightmarishly this week.

So what is to be done? It is not true that politicians have been unaware of or indifferent to what is going on. The last government’s “respect” agenda tried to tackle the anti-social behaviour that blights so many inner-city areas; but Labour woefully failed to get to grips with welfare dependency or take up a consistent moral position on the fecklessness of many in receipt of benefit. As was evident during the emergency session of Parliament on Thursday, the party still fails to grasp the extent of its own failure in this regard or understand how public opinion has hardened against the failed nostrums of the past four decades.

Will Britain take the hard steps necessary to reclaim the shards of its national heritage that still remain salvagable?  Honestly, I really, really doubt it.  So does that perceptive pundit, Mark Steyn, whose new book has some comments exactly on point (actually, pretty much a whole chapter, it seems).  The problem, when the majority line up at the public trough for three squares, lodging, and entertainment, is that even politicians who are very determined to change things must stand for the next election.  Can Britain summon up a generation’s worth of electoral will to turn things around?  It doesn’t seem likely to me.  The dominant media are too left, and it’s just too easy to demonize politicians who cut spending and introduce reforms that actually require people to make better decisions, reforms that don’t essentially subsidize bad behavior.

It is not clear to me that the USA will fare better in this regard, in the long term, painful as it is to acknowledge.

Outside of the obvious melanin in their skin, they appear to be spiritual “brothers” in a more significant sense, that of world view and basic expectations for young people in a civil society.

Read this speech by Mayor Nutter, on the occasion of British style rioting and violence in Philadelphia.

Then read Bill Cosby on related issues.

Why, oh why, aren’t these people more influential in the “black community” than Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and gangsta rap?

Well…  the answer is pretty obvious.

But the solution will take time, and be painful (though not more painful than what’s happening now).  And the people who implement the solution of removing incentives for bad behavior, and then punishing bad behavior with more certainty than now exists, while simultaneously rewarding good behavior (with the non-egalitarian results that are bound to occur), are going to be the people who are vilified by all sides, especially by the demogogues and race hustlers.

One point is obvious:  the “black caucus” of congress mostly doesn’t care a bean about the majority of blacks, but only about their own political power and re-election prospects.  They have the platform and the power to effect real change in the calculus of incentives in the inner city….  but they use it to tell lies and buy votes.

Happy Cost of Government Day! You Worked for It – WSJ.com

 

The drama of the last-minute vote to increase the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion has focused on projected deficits of the federal government and how they will add to the national debt. Those numbers are large. The national debt was $10 trillion when President Obama was inaugurated and is expected to be $15.5 trillion at the end of the year.

Yet focusing on the deficit understates the true cost of government. In fact, this year’s deficit of $1.5 trillion is “only” 40% of federal spending. And while federal spending has jumped to $3.8 trillion in 2011 from $2.9 trillion in 2008—a 31% increase—that does not include state and local spending, which is estimated to total $1.6 trillion in 2011, according to new report from the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation (ATRF). Nor do these numbers include the cost of individuals and businesses complying with federal regulations: The total cost of such compliance is estimated to be $1.8 trillion.

Focusing national attention on the deficit rather than on the total cost of government—federal, state and local spending plus the cost of the federal and state regulatory burden—causes several problems. First, it deliberately understates the true cost of government. It also allows advocates of ever-larger government to misdirect our attention away from the bigger picture to just “the deficit.” And there are ways to dramatically increase the cost of government without adding to the deficit: new regulations and new spending programs matched with higher taxes. (Think ObamaCare and cap-and-trade rules from the Environmental Protection Agency.)

To more accurately measure the true cost of government, ATRF has calculated a Cost of Government Day. We determine this each year by adding the cost of government spending at all levels to a conservative estimate of all regulatory burdens—and then counting how many days of the year Americans work to pay the costs of government.

The Tax Foundation divides total federal, state and local taxes by total national income to come up with Tax Freedom Day. This year America worked until April 12 to pay all taxes.

When you include the costs of federal deficit spending and the regulatory burden this year, however, you don’t reach the Cost of Government Day until Aug. 12. Americans will work for 103 days to pay for federal spending, 44 days for state and local spending and 77 days to cover the cost of the regulatory burden.

This is the third year in a row that Americans will work into August to pay for the cost of government. Before 2009, the day never fell later than July 21. Looking back, we see that the Reagan years held the Cost of Government Day steady at July 4. Under the first President Bush, it moved forward 15 days. But Americans gained 15 days when the day moved back in the last six years of divided government with a Republican Congress against President Bill Clinton.

During the presidency of George W. Bush, however, Cost of Government Day moved forward to July 16 in 2008, from June 28 in 2000, costing taxpayers 18 days of extra labor. Since he took office, President Barack Obama has pushed the day all the way forward to Aug. 12. In other words, Americans are now working 27 more days per year to pay for government spending and regulations than on the day Mr. Obama became president.

Looking at the total cost of government rather than merely the annual deficit gives a more complete picture—and a more frightening understanding—of how much government costs each one of us. It also suggests how clever politicians can hide the cost of government, disguising increased spending by urging us to focus on the deficit and then “paying for” higher spending with higher taxes. Government grows but the deficit is unchanged.

Regulations do not even show up in the federal budget and are rarely covered on the nightly news. But this year they will cost Americans $2.8 trillion, consuming 77 days of labor for the average worker. More than two months a year we work just to pay the bills imposed on us by the EPA and other expensive regulators.

The new rule established by House Speaker John Boehner is that any debt-ceiling hike must now be matched by spending cuts of at least the same size, and the Republican rejection of any tax increase constrains the president’s ability to further hike spending and debt. So look out for the Obama administration to focus on expanding government through increased regulations.

The watchdog media report relatively well on the White House and Congress. But they don’t have the bandwidth to report on, never mind to critique, the explosion of regulations underway. Mr. Obama is counting on this.

 

Yet another appeals court has declared that the government can’t force you to purchase health insurance, asAppeals court rules against Obama healthcare mandate. However, one judge disagreed:

The Obama administration did win some support from the appeals court for the individual mandate. One of the three judges, Stanley Marcus, dissented from the majority opinion.

The majority “has ignored the undeniable fact that Congress’ commerce power has grown exponentially over the past two centuries and is now generally accepted as having afforded Congress the authority to create rules regulating large areas of our national economy,” wrote Marcus, also a Clinton appointee to the appeals court.

 Translation: since Congress has usurped the power of the states and of individuals so effectively in the past, there is now no reason not to let Congress just do anything it wants. Anything at all, it seems.

The previous post in this series is here.

The nation that refuses to allow people the means to defend themselves is also the nation that refuses to defend itself, it seems.

During the Los Angeles riots, many shopkeepers armed themselves and defended their property, often with great effect, in the sense that the rioters simply went to destroy and loot stores where the shopkeepers didn’t shoot at them.  Reports widely circulated at the time repeatedly revealed police decisons NOT to defend property and people for fear of “escalation.”  They literally abandoned the residents of many neighborhoods to their own devices.

One Korean businessman’s report:

Jong Min Kang, president of the Korean American Business Association, was president of Korean Young Adult Team of L.A., when the riots erupted.

“THERE was a lot of activity to protect Korean businesses, especially in Koreatown. A lot of young Korean people had weapons. There was every kind of weapon, AK-47s and Uzis.

“I have two businesses, one downtown, which is general wholesale merchandise, and another in South Central, a discount retail shop. My store in South Central is in a strip mall and there were more than 100 merchants there and more than 20 security guards to protect the Korean stores. So (the rioters) couldn’t come in. Nothing happened to those stores but a lot of other stores were burned. It was a terrible situation.”

Britain’s experience shows what happens when a disarmed populace is confronted with amoral looters and thugs. On the other hand, far from increasing the chaos, the presence of firearms is wonderfully clarifying. People who are determined to protect themselves, their loved ones and their property do not make good victims.  Even ARMED thugs simply choose to go elsewhere (the LA riots experience), let alone cretins whose primary weapons are rocks and bats.  The criminals are not brave.  They are looking for easy victims at low risk to themselves.

Britain may be abdicating as a nation.  I hope not.  But the signs are all there of an aging society that can’t rouse itself to take necessary action to defend itself, a society that just seems not to care if it survives or not.  On the other hand, there are many elements of current British society which, even if they are not directly behind the unrest (an open question, in my judgment), will surely be happy to take advantage of it to push their own agenda for Britain.

The next post in this series is here.

Thomas Friedman has really lost his mind.  He seems to think that if both parties get together and agree to ignore the laws of economics in concert, then everything will be better. 

Another of the Powerline entries.  Check out all the faces and other details.

Lawmakers close to deal to avoid default

Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat, told CNN: “Default is far less of a possibility now than it was even a day ago because the leaders are talking, and talking in a constructive way.”

Oh no.

We’re doomed.

If Schumer calls it constructive, that generally means the Republicans are busy caving in…. again.

UPDATE:  This summarizes nicely why Schumer, et. al., are so willing to call the agreement “constructive.”

Bachmann criticized for silence on suicides in her district |

An article in the liberal magazine Mother Jones criticizes Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn) for her silence on a tragic string of nine suicides over the past two years in her district. The writer argues that Bachmann’s refusal to support antibullying legislation in the state in 2006 and the agenda favored by some of her anti-gay allies in Minnesota may have contributed to a harmful environment. And that climate, Mother Jones reporter Stephanie Mencimer suggests, could have played a role in the teen deaths in the troubled Anoka-Hennepin school district where Bachmann herself had once attended high school.

So now it’s actually news when the Mother Jones magazine criticizes a conservative candidate for not embracing leftist legislation?

Note how hard the reporter worked to find out whether OTHER districts around the country have had similar events, whether any are comparable to Bachmann’s district, whether any of them have Democrat representatives instead of Republican, etc., etc., etc.  In other words context that allows a reader to make some kind of judgment about whether this is even unusual.

But no, nothing like that.

Extra, extra, read all about it!

Dog bites man.

UPDATE: *************************

It looks more and more like the main stream media intend to Palinize Michelle Bachmann.  She is getting very similar news treatement.

Bachmann says she, not husband, running for office

Rep. Michele Bachmann steadfastly refused Thursday to answer questions about her family’s business and finances, saying that she, not her husband, was the one seeking the White House.

The Minnesota Republican faced queries about Marcus Bachmann’s Christian counseling clinic that attempts to convert gay patients as well as her own beliefs on sexuality during a luncheon at the National Press Club. With her husband sitting nearby, Bachmann said she expected scrutiny as a candidate but questions about her family were off-limits.

Look behind the question that Bachmann was asked, and you’ll see that the real question is, “Should gay patients be allowed to have access to treatment that might help them move to a straight lifestyle?”  The questioner makes it sound like the Bachmann clinic kidnaps gays, holds them hostage, and tries to brainwash them.  But of course, if Bachmann had said ANYTHING in response other than “no comment”, she’d have heard a distorted snippet on the evening news suggesting that she hates gays.